[PROJECT REQUEST] Fighting Vipers Extended Character Select Fix

[KikkerFrog]

As some of you might know, there is a modified FV ROM out there that unlocks Mahler, Big Mahler, Sonic & Tails and the developers of the game as playable characters, but choosing the developer character will crash the game because it doesn't actually have any intro animations assigned to it. Would one of you be able to either:
1. Remove the developer character from the character select screen so only Mahler, Big Mahler and Sonic & Tails remain or 2. Assign the developer character a proper start up animation? I want to flash this ROM onto an actual Model 2B board, but I also don't want to have to unplug the arcade every single time someone decides to try and play as the developer character.

Thank you kindly in advance to anyone that's willing to take a crack at this for me. Feel free to message me for the modified files in question.

 

[KikkerFrog]

BUMP

 

[ekorz]

You need someone who knows intel 80960 risc, and the only person I can think of is @biggestsonicfan.

That said, if you want to send me the files I could take a look at what has changed. Even though I don't know risc I could boot it up in mame and use the changed values as a starting point and go from there. What you're asking for isn't that much work, at its simplest solution, so depending on how the data is structured I might be able to figure it out anyway and remove the problematic character from the select screen.

 

[KikkerFrog]

You need someone who knows intel 80960 risc, and the only person I can think of is @biggestsonicfan.

That said, if you want to send me the files I could take a look at what has changed. Even though I don't know risc I could boot it up in mame and use the changed values as a starting point and go from there. What you're asking for isn't that much work, at its simplest solution, so depending on how the data is structured I might be able to figure it out anyway and remove the problematic character from the select screen.

PM sent

 

[ekorz]

Ok thankfully the edits are just to a data table, and I never had to touch the RISC program code.
The data from epr-18610d.7 and epr-18611d.8 look word(?)swapped and concatenated together. At position 12950 you'll see this:

offset 0x12950 in each file
epr-18610d.7: 32 30 01 04 07 00 08 09 00 00 00 00 00 00
epr-18611d.8: 00 00 06 03 02 05 0B 0A 00 00 00 00 00 00

The important bit is this set of data that just looks to be an incrementing IDs (00 01 02 03 04 05 06....), scrambled a bit.
epr-18610d.7: 01 04 07 00 08 09
epr-18611d.8: 06 03 02 05 0B 0A

Those are character references, I think. "0B" seems to be the dev character, so it needs to be removed. You only need to edit epr-18611d.8. I used HxD to make the edit. CTRL+G pops up a window so you can go to a specific offset, then type in 12956 and hit enter. Change "0B 0A" to "0A 00"

and it will remove the dev and display BM next to Sonic.

For what it's worth, the dev character (this one?) did not crash anything in MAME so I'm not sure why it doesn't work on real hardware.

 

[biggestsonicfan]

Ever have one of those experiences in grade school, an embarrassing moment that lives with you forever? That's what this is to me.

Ever since discovering the manipulation of the character select table, it's a been a nightmare for me to deal with. A reoccurring nightmare. "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" applies here. These characters were never meant to be selected this way, and the fact that I wrote this up back in 2007 shows just how dated this information is.

These characters have some failsafes (the profile entry at character select) but were never intended to be selected this way. As far as I know, their proper method to select them is to cycle the player's character in debug mode.

As far as it was explained to me by user homemadehoney, the game crashes due to the Sega employees having an invalid "intro" animation, the values are higher than the motion/animation table. However, even if you get past this, their moves table also has invalid moves, so simply playing the characters on real hardware can also cause crashes.

It's fixable, but not without effort and some decision making and creative patching to make them fully working.

My advice is to simply patch debug mode to become more easily accessible than the full code. I personally use Service Switch + P1 Punch

 

[KikkerFrog]

Ever have one of those experiences in grade school, an embarrassing moment that lives with you forever? That's what this is to me.

Ever since discovering the manipulation of the character select table, it's a been a nightmare for me to deal with. A reoccurring nightmare. "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" applies here. These characters were never meant to be selected this way, and the fact that I wrote this up back in 2007 shows just how dated this information is.

These characters have some failsafes (the profile entry at character select) but were never intended to be selected this way. As far as I know, their proper method to select them is to cycle the player's character in debug mode.

As far as it was explained to me by user homemadehoney, the game crashes due to the Sega employees having an invalid "intro" animation, the values are higher than the motion/animation table. However, even if you get past this, their moves table also has invalid moves, so simply playing the characters on real hardware can also cause crashes.

It's fixable, but not without effort and some decision making and creative patching to make them fully working.

My advice is to simply patch debug mode to become more easily accessible than the full code. I personally use Service Switch + P1 Punch

Mahler, Big Mahler and Sonic & Tails work fine this way. So no, I will not patch the debug menu back in. I don't want or need to use the developer character. Simply removing him from the character select will more than suffice for me. I consider my issue to be solved. Thank you for your input anyway!